Our WordPress Stack: Tools We Use to Craft Stunning Websites
Building WordPress websites that are efficient, user-friendly, and scalable requires a well-curated set of tools. We believe that every piece of our toolkit plays a vital role in delivering the best possible experience for our clients. Each tool has been carefully chosen, considering both its performance and the specific needs of our clients. Today, we’re pulling back the curtain to share the tools we use and why they’re essential to our workflow.
Our toolkit is designed not only to help us build beautiful and functional websites but also to optimize them for performance, usability, and long-term growth. We are constantly refining our process, seeking out the best tools to make our workflow smoother, our websites faster, and our clients happier. Here’s a detailed look at each of the tools that make up our WordPress stack:
1. Bricks Builder: Advanced, Lightweight, and Feature-Rich
Bricks Builder is our secret weapon for creating fast and visually stunning websites. Unlike other page builders that can be heavy and slow, Bricks Builder is optimized for performance. It offers advanced design capabilities and flexibility, which makes it perfect for creating custom websites without sacrificing page speed. Its intuitive interface also helps us build dynamic and responsive pages, ensuring our clients’ websites look great on any device. We value Bricks Builder because it allows us to push creative boundaries while keeping websites light and blazing fast. It provides full control over every aspect of the design, which is crucial for maintaining consistency and delivering a high-quality user experience.
2. ACF Pro: Extending WordPress Functionality
Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) Pro is an indispensable tool when we need to add custom data fields to WordPress websites. ACF Pro allows us to add almost any type of custom content, making it easy to extend WordPress far beyond its default functionality. Whether we need to add complex forms, create dynamic content, or add custom settings, ACF Pro empowers us to customize WordPress to meet specific needs effectively. It allows us to build highly specific, data-driven websites where clients can easily manage content. This flexibility is essential when dealing with complex projects that require more than just standard WordPress features.
3. Fluent SMTP: Reliable Email Delivery
Email reliability is a crucial aspect of website functionality. We use Fluent SMTP to ensure that emails sent from our WordPress websites—whether contact form submissions, user notifications, or newsletters—are reliably delivered. By handling SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) with ease, Fluent SMTP helps us overcome common email issues, like messages getting lost or ending up in spam folders, making communication seamless. Fluent SMTP’s reliability ensures that clients never miss an important email, which can be critical for their business operations. A missed contact form submission could mean a lost customer, so ensuring email delivery is a top priority.
4. Rank Math SEO: Optimize and Get Discovered
SEO is an essential component of any website’s success. We leverage Rank Math SEO to enhance our websites’ discoverability on search engines. With its easy-to-follow optimization suggestions and powerful features like schema markup and keyword analysis, Rank Math makes it simple to ensure every page we build is set up to rank well. We love its clean interface and the fact that it doesn’t bog down website performance while providing top-notch SEO insights. Rank Math’s features make it easier for our clients to understand their SEO efforts, empowering them to take charge of their online visibility. It’s not just about getting found; it’s about getting found by the right audience, which Rank Math helps us achieve.
5. Spotlight Search: Faster Workflows for WordPress
Spotlight Search is a plugin we developed to boost our productivity and that of our clients. It brings a powerful search feature to WordPress, making workflows significantly faster. With Spotlight Search, we can quickly navigate between different pages, posts, and settings without getting lost in the WordPress dashboard. It’s like having a search bar that instantly brings everything to your fingertips, saving time and improving efficiency.
Spotlight Search also allows users to create and edit pages, posts, and custom post types directly from the search interface. It has seamless integrations with the most popular WordPress builders, including Gutenberg, Elementor, and Bricks Builder, which makes it even more powerful. Additionally, it enables quick navigation to different parts of the current WordPress dashboard and provides the ability to export all settings, ensuring a smooth workflow across multiple projects.
We believe that time is one of the most valuable assets, and Spotlight Search helps us maximize it. This tool has been a game-changer in reducing the time it takes to manage websites, allowing us and our clients to focus on what matters most—growing their business.
6. Better Quick Links: Designed for Business Owners
Another tool we’re proud to have developed is Better Quick Links. This plugin was specifically designed with business owners in mind, providing an easy way for them to access the most critical parts of their website. With just a click, they can navigate to frequently used settings or pages, which helps make website management more intuitive and stress-free, even for non-tech-savvy users. We created Better Quick Links to bridge the gap between developers and business owners, ensuring that our clients can easily manage their websites without feeling overwhelmed by the technical details. This empowers them to take ownership of their website, which is vital for long-term success.
7. Microsoft Clarity: Gain Insight with Analytics and Heatmaps
Understanding how visitors interact with your website is key to making informed improvements. Microsoft Clarity gives us detailed analytics and heatmaps, allowing us to see what users are clicking on, how far they scroll, and where they spend the most time. These insights are invaluable for optimizing user experience and ensuring the website design effectively serves its purpose. The heatmaps provided by Microsoft Clarity help us understand user behavior in real-time, showing which parts of the page are getting the most attention and which elements might need to be adjusted. This data-driven approach ensures that every change we make is backed by solid evidence, ultimately leading to better user experiences and improved conversion rates.
8. HappyFiles Pro: Advanced Media Management
Managing media files in WordPress can get chaotic without the right tools. We use HappyFiles Pro to organize images, videos, and other media into categorized folders. This makes it easy to locate and manage media assets—saving time during development and simplifying content updates for our clients in the long term. HappyFiles Pro brings a level of order and structure to media management that is often missing in WordPress by default. This is particularly helpful for clients with large amounts of media, as it prevents the frustration of endlessly scrolling through disorganized files. With HappyFiles Pro, our clients can easily find what they need, when they need it, and keep their content updated without stress.
9. JetForm Builder: Flexible Form Creation
JetForm Builder is a powerful tool we use to create dynamic and complex forms on WordPress websites. It allows us to build everything from simple contact forms to advanced booking systems with ease. Its intuitive interface and integration capabilities make it ideal for providing a seamless user experience while collecting important data efficiently. Whether it’s gathering leads, processing bookings, or conducting surveys, JetForm Builder provides the flexibility to create exactly the type of form we need. The advanced customization options mean we can create forms that not only look great but also integrate seamlessly with other systems, providing a smooth user journey from start to finish.
The Sum of All Parts
These tools, each selected with care, help us create high-performing, highly customized WordPress websites. From building with Bricks, extending functionality with ACF, ensuring smooth email operations with Fluent SMTP, to optimizing SEO with Rank Math—each plugin serves a distinct purpose. JetForm Builder allows us to create powerful forms, while Microsoft Clarity helps us gain deep insights into user behavior. HappyFiles Pro keeps our media organized, and our own plugins, Spotlight Search and Better Quick Links, reflect our commitment to streamlining workflows for both developers and business owners alike.
Our goal is to provide a toolkit that not only helps us build visually appealing and functional websites but also supports our clients in managing and growing their online presence with confidence. We believe that by combining these tools, we can deliver websites that are not only optimized for performance but also provide an enjoyable and straightforward user experience. Every tool we use contributes to making websites more efficient, reliable, and capable of driving business growth.
We strive to stay ahead of industry trends, continuously updating our stack to include the best possible tools for website development. As WordPress evolves, so do we, ensuring that our clients always benefit from the latest advancements in technology and design. By carefully selecting and integrating these tools, we can provide websites that are easy to manage, visually stunning, and built to meet the unique needs of each client.
Do you have a favorite WordPress tool, or are you curious about how we use these plugins in practice? We’d love to hear from you! Feel free to reach out and share your thoughts or ask any questions—you might just discover a new tool that changes your workflow for the better!
